Google launches 'Instant' service

Google search is now faster than before as the company has launched a live-updating service that will save surfers 2-5 seconds of online search time.

The product, named "Instant", will begin to roll out search results around the world from Thursday night, the Daily Telegraph reported. Google searches will now predict what users are looking for from the moment they start typing, the company announced.

As internet users begin a word, Google's homepage will move instantly to a page of results that is updated as each letter is typed.

Google, which currently answers one billion search queries per day, described the move as a "fundamental change" that will save the world's internet users a combined 11 hours per second, or 111 years per day. The update has been trailed over the past two days with 'Google Doodles' on the company's homepage.

The service, currently available only to users who are logged in to Google, will save typical searchers between two and five seconds per query. It should take the average query time down from approximately 24 seconds to around 20 seconds.

The company also estimates that "dynamically predicting what people search for reduces the time it takes to enter a typical query by 50 percent".

The service will also display a series of its best guesses as users type, and searchers can then scroll down to the most appropriate.

The company estimates that each Google search will now generate between five and seven times as many requests to its servers, but because each search generates only a very small amount of data to transmit back to each computer, the new service is not likely to strain either broadband networks or Google's own servers.

Users on particularly slow connections will automatically be pushed to the original Google search, but will have the option to select "Instant".